Telefónica and IODA, specialist in digital distribution, marketing, and technology solutions for the independent music industry, today announced a worldwide partnership with Telefónica. The
agreement will enable Telefónica to make IODA's catalog of independent music available to its users in 24 countries.
 
Telefónica will make IODA's more than one million tracks available to consumers as ringtones, mastertones and full tracks, as well as video tones and album art for wallpapers. IODA content will also be available via Telefónica's subscription services.
 
"IODA is a pioneer in the mobile industry and holds a unique position as a conduit between thousands of independent labels and fans around the world. We believe our partnership will help satiate the growing thirst for independent music among our customers, and look forward to a fruitful relationship," said Antonio Santacruz, director of music products and services for Telefónica.
 
"IODA's partnership with Telefónica reflects both our commitment to mobile as a growing part of our business, as well as our passion for Spanish, Latin and World music. In the last four years, we have built the largest roster of independent Latin music labels available in the industry," commented Kevin Arnold, founder and CEO of IODA. "Telefónica's commitment to independent music and video is opening up an enormous opportunity for labels to connect with their fans. We look forward to an exciting partnership."

NEC has announced a definitive agreement to acquire NetCracker Technology, a US based software and solutions company delivering Operations Support Systems (OSS).

With the acquisition, NEC says it adds a key element of software and services to its portfolio of mobile and fixed infrastructure products. NetCracker's products, services and domain expertise will be integral to leveraging complementary assets within both companies.

"NetCracker has distinguished itself with a record of successful OSS transformations and exceptional software solutions and professional services for leading communications service providers," said Mr. Kaoru Yano, President of NEC. "The acquisition of NetCracker strengthens NEC's offerings and brings even greater value to the global communications industry."

"NEC and NetCracker share a vision of operations and business support systems being critical to communications service providers, enabling them to build a sustainable competitive advantage," said Andrew Feinberg, CEO of NetCracker. "NEC's scale and solution offering will help us extend our core application and services footprint and continue to broaden the solutions we offer to our global customers."

NEC says it will now leverage the acquisition of NetCracker to strengthen its existing business foundations and to provide total solutions for communications businesses whose IP and service diversification needs continue to grow. The company anticipates that Operations Support Systems will represent a key element to new international growth that is expected to generate approximately 200 billion yen over the next 5 years.

Sony Ericsson, the 50/50 joint venture between Ericsson and Sony Corporation, has announced that the company sees continued market challenges impacting sales and profit in the second quarter 2008.

Sony Ericsson expect to ship approximately 24 million phones during the second quarter of 2008 with an estimated ASP (Average Selling Price) of EUR 115. Gross margin is expected to decline both year over year and sequentially. Net income before taxes is estimated to be about break-even for the second quarter of 2008.

Fresh off the launch of 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, Swsscom sees 3G as an opportunity to launch a unifying network strategy. Tellabs is helping them get there.

Mobile messaging operator TynTec has accepted a significant minority investment from HarbourVest Partners, LLC, a global private equity investment firm. The funds will assist TynTec's rapid expansion into Asia, the Middle East and Africa and will help accelerate market penetration of the company's recent product innovations.  HarbourVest investment professionals Alex Rogers and Claudio Siniscalco will be joining TynTec's Board of Directors.

Ralph Eric Kunz, Co-Founder and Chairman of TynTec, said:  "We are delighted by HarbourVest's investment in our business.  We believe their experience as an investor in growth companies with technical and market leadership will help TynTec continue to grow and enhance its product offering."

Robert Wadsworth, Managing Director of HarbourVest, said:  "TynTec is the preeminent technology leader in the fast growing enterprise-quality SMS market, and is being relied upon increasingly by its customers to deliver mobile messaging applications in mission critical environments.
HarbourVest are strong believers in the continued growth of SMS as one of the world's primary global communication media, and we are looking forward to this new partnership and helping TynTec to achieve global scale."

TynTec is claimed to differ from traditional SMS providers because the company can offer operator-level SMS services, enabling greater speed, reliability and measurability than standard messaging services. As well as guaranteed delivery in less than 15 seconds, TynTec says it can also provide full delivery receipts and a guarantee of control and security of the message direct to the handset.

Michael Kowalzik, CEO of TynTec, said:  "We are excited to embark on this next phase of growth for our company alongside HarbourVest Partners, and believe that their global presence, combined with their financial and strategic backing will provide TynTec the appropriate platform from which to further execute our global expansion strategy.For instance, Harborvest will help us accelerate the market penetration of our innovative products including International Messaging Transit, a SMS hubbing platform for operators, or OneNumber, which allows businesses and internet service providers  to receive any communication form (voice, fax, SMS, VOIP calls, MMS, etc) on a single phone number."

GyPSii, the geo-location and mobile social networking provider, has today announced it has entered into a multi-year worldwide agreement with Garmin, the specialist in satellite navigation.

Under the terms of the agreement, GyPSii will provide technology, products, worldwide data center infrastructure, development licenses, and GyPSii branding rights to Garmin, on a worldwide non-exclusive basis for a range of Garmin products. Garmin anticipates that future products will include friend finding applications that support the GyPSii-powered location-based social networking services platform.

The agreement provides development licenses to Garmin, to leverage the GyPSii location-based geo-social networking services infrastructure for internal development and integration with its products. The agreement also has provisions for revenue sharing between GyPSii and Garmin.

GyPSii incorporates a wide range of location-specific functions and mobile lifestyle services – including mobile search, user generated content-sharing and social networking – in a single platform.

"We're very excited to work with an established global market leader like Garmin to deliver its consumer navigation solutions," said Dan Harple, founder and CEO of GyPSii. "This agreement underscores GyPSii as the leading platform for delivering on a global level the next generation of mobile social networking communities and location-aware mobile lifestyle services. Our agreement with Garmin opens up these new functions and services to consumers everywhere and takes the multi-billion dollar navigation market in an exciting new direction."

The Femto Forum, the independent industry association that supports femtocell deployment worldwide, and the NGMN Alliance, the group focused on the evolution to the next generation of mobile networks, will cooperate on how femtocells can benefit the architecture of next-generation mobile broadband networks such as WiMAX and LTE.

The two bodies say they will work together to ensure that next generation mobile networks can incorporate femtocells from the very beginning of their deployment rather than integrating the technology afterwards. This is expected to enable mobile operators to use femtocells to manage the cost of rollouts, plan spectrum use and ensure optimum coverage and capacity precisely where it is needed.  The two bodies say they will be involved in establishing clear performance targets, fundamental recommendations and deployment scenarios for next generation mobile broadband networks incorporating femtocells and to help ensure that cost/performance ratios are optimised.

"Adding femtocells to existing cellular networks provides operators with numerous benefits, but rolling out a completely new mobile technology designed to include femtocells introduces fundamental and powerful advantages," said Dr. Peter Meissner, Operating Officer of the NGMN Alliance. "The partnership between the Femto Forum and the NGMN Alliance will offer operators a completely different approach to network rollout than exists today."

"Femtocells can transform how next generation mobile networks can be deployed. For example, femtocells could be employed using higher frequencies to deliver targeted intense high bandwidth requirements inside buildings – exactly where subscribers need it. This is expected to enable operators to use the scarce lower frequency spectrum to provide good quality coverage across entire markets with the minimum number of macro network cells" said Prof. Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum "The range of possibilities opened up by femtocells is extensive and this agreement will help ensure that the most can be made of the opportunity."

The NGMN Alliance recommendations include a clear requirement for a cost-optimised indoor node design. It also includes requirements for self-organising networks with automated self-optimising and self-configuring functionality.  Femtocells are the first example of a self-organising network and therefore meet both these requirements. The two bodies will work together to define technology requirements, and make recommendations which will then be converted into solutions to be developed within the Femto Forum and promoted jointly.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment UK has become the UK's first record label to license MIDAS, MIG's mobile messaging platform to manage a host of in and outbound SMS campaigns, opening up mobile as an instant activation channel and enabling Sony BMG to communicate directly with its database of over one million opted in mobile subscribers throughout the UK.

The 12 month contract gives Sony BMG's in-house direct marketing team the capability to set-up, manage and run targeted mobile marketing campaigns.  These include distributing weekly SMS newsletters, event driven alerts services, and special offers on digital content from Sony BMG artists.

Simon Daniels, Direct Marketing Manager, Sony BMG Music Entertainment UK said: "MIG were able to offer us exactly what we were looking for from a mobile messaging platform – Speed, capacity and reliability.  Licensing MIG's MIDAS platform will give us one hundred per cent control over our mobile marketing activity and enable us to be more nimble and responsive to our subscribers needs.  MIG are widely regarded as the market leaders when it comes to mobile interactivity and were the natural partner of choice for Sony BMG."

Tim Dunn, Head of Marketing Services, Mobile Interactive Group said, "Partnering with Sony BMG has enabled the MIG team to broaden its experience of working with big name brands in the media and entertainment industry.  Due its high capacity, high performance and reliability, MIDAS is ‘the' mobile messaging platform for tier one media brands in the UK such as ITV and FIVE, providing Sony BMG's direct marketing team with the knowledge they are working with the best messaging platform in the market place."

Convergent billing specialist, Cerillion Technologies, has today announced the launch of Cerillion Express, a pre-integrated and pre-configured CRM and billing solution for telecoms operators. Said to offer rapid implementation and a 'very low' total cost of ownership, Cerillion Express is claimed to provide all the elements required to support a communications provider's business in one off-the-shelf package.

The first edition of the new solution, Cerillion Express for Mobile, is targeted at mobile service providers who require a proven business support system to support their mobile operations. Utilising core components of Cerillion's bundled component product suite, the solution covers the entire customer lifecycle from initial sales and order handling, to billing and collections, and includes the integration of prepaid and postpaid services. 

"With Cerillion Express we are able to dramatically lower the entry barrier for operators who want a complete solution to support their end-to-end customer management and billing processes," says Guy O'Connor, business development director, Cerillion Technologies.  "Based on best practice configuration and process support, Cerillion Express also delivers optimal system performance and can be run with a very small operations team or operated on a wholly managed service basis."

"Cerillion Express is able to grow easily in breadth and sophistication, enabling operators to add extra functionality as and when required," he adds. "We have drawn on more than ten years' experience and expertise of CRM and billing projects to build the solution, so that our customers benefit by being able to focus on critical 'go to market' decisions without the distraction of system constraints or integration issues."

The turnkey solution incorporates a full suite of professional services, including implementation in ten weeks; complete product and operations training; and a support and maintenance service, based on defined service level agreements. In addition to the full managed service option, the solution can be provided under a build-operate-transfer model, which offers a managed service for the first year of system operation.